1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to anti-virus systems, and more specifically relates to a system and method that avoids storing and forwarding web pages that can carry viruses.
2. Related Art
Viruses are prevalent today throughout the Internet, and can be spread in many different ways. One technique for spreading viruses is to embed a virus in a web page as an active web page element. Then, when a user loads the web page from a web server, the virus can be launched onto the user's computer. Often, a web page server receives and stores web pages from many different sources and/or authors. Accordingly, identifying these types of viruses can be a difficult and time-consuming process for the web server.
One way to address this problem is to run virus-checking programs on the web server to scan for viruses and remove any residual viruses. Unfortunately, virus-checking programs provide several drawbacks including: (1) they consume computational resources; (2) that must be run often to be effective; and (3) they are limited by the effectiveness of the scanning program.
For instance, U.S. patent application US 2002/0103783 A1, by Muhlestein, “Decentralized Virus Scanning For Stored Data,” filed on Aug. 1, 2002, which is hereby incorporated by reference, provides a system for scanning requested files for viruses. The invention, however, requires an external computing device that opens requested files and scans for viruses any time there appears to be some risk. Thus, the system potentially consumes a significant amount of time and resources.
Accordingly, a need exists for a web server system that can eliminate viruses without incurring such computational overhead.